Sen. Wyden talks with KTVZ News about the continuing government shutdown, health care and fentanyl crisis
Spencer Sacks
(Update: Adding more comments from Wyden, full video interview)
BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) — The second-longest shutdown in history is in its fourth week, with no clear end in sight.
KTVZ News spoke Thursday with Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who said he’s grown increasingly frustrated with the shutdown.
“It’s it seems like there is no willingness, particularly with the Trump administration, to open up the negotiations to get this resolved,” Wyden told us.
“But you have to have the president say to everybody who’s following this, ‘Look, let’s get to work. Let’s do it in a bipartisan way, and I know how to do it.’”
One of the major sticking points between Republicans and Democrats is over health care.
It’s an issue that both sides have talked about fixing. Senator Wyden said we need a new way of thinking about the problems.
“No question that we have to look for ways to modernize,” he said. “For example, the employer-based system comes from the World War II movement. Now that’s really an important tool for employers we can modernize. And so, you bet there ways to make everything better, if you really want to dig in and work in a bipartisan way.”
Senator Wyden said he still supports employer-based health insurance but is interested in companies giving financial assistance directly to workers.
Another major issue going on is the flip-flop in the courts over the legality of President Trump sending federal National Guard troops to Portland. When asked about this, Wyden was animated in his reply.
“It’s a local function,” he said. “You know what we’re saying here? We believe that our city is overwhelmingly made up of people who want a safe and community-oriented kind of approach.”
“We don’t want the feds coming in and trampling all over our rights. And that’s really what the Founding Fathers always thought. It’s that these were local kind of issues, you bet. There are things that need to be done at the local level.”
Rulings are expected soon by both Portland u.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The senator also spoke about the devastation that the fentanyl crisis has caused. He said he is hopeful for the future on curbing the epidemic.
Wyden told us he is working on legislation right now hoping to reduce the effects that fentanyl has on our community.
“It (fentanyl) is so powerful,” he said. “The cartels and everybody else pushes it, once it gets to the United States. What I want to do, though, is go to the source, and these brokers are playing a bigger and bigger, role in terms of getting it to the United States. Let’s cut them off at the source.”